On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 7:02 AM, Florent Daigni?re <nextgens at freenetproject.org> wrote: > * Jano <alejandro at mosteo.com> [2008-07-18 15:59:38]: > >> Florent Daigni?re wrote: >> >> > * Jano <alejandro at mosteo.com> [2008-07-18 >> > 13:21:33]: >> > >> >> Since the last version #1153, my node takes a very long time to start >> >> (half >> >> an hour or more). Trying to load the homepage gives a page saying that >> >> "Freenet is starting up", and below: >> >> >> >> Not enough entropy is available! >> >> There isn't enough entropy available on your system... Freenet won't start >> >> until it can gather enough. >> >> >> >> This node runs in an unattended box, so any entropy sources will be >> >> non-human. I have read somewhere that /dev/random is slow to refill and >> >> can >> >> be exhausted easily if used too much. Could this be part of the problem? >> >> >> > >> > This is the problem. >> > >> > Launch a "find / >/dev/null" from a different shell and that should help >> > the OS to refill the entropy pool. >> >> I'm going to try this, it's been two hours now with the node stuck waiting. >> >> *** >> >> It worked. I know /dev/urandom is less secure, is there a likely possibility >> of >> attacks if urandom is used instead? > > Before #1153 we were using urandom... and yes that was insecure. > > I might introduce some code to generate hard-drive accesses in 1154.
You might want to check out HAVEGE: http://www.irisa.fr/caps/projects/hipsor/ It takes advantage of branch mispredictions to give high quality randomness. The algorithm is quite simple. -- Cory Nelson
